Bab Bab 35 · ‘But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the

. ‘But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the

houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its

colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on

a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for

the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its

life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the

fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had

seen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I

had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where

events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream,

no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn’t going to dive into

it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But

as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The

immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a

wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams

of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed;

Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his

firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her

frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb’ Itam, surly and faithful;

Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight--I

am certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter’s wand. But the

figure round which all these are grouped--that one lives, and I am not

certain of him. No magician’s wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He

is one of us.

‘Jim, as I’ve told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey

back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to

lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches

sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the

heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her

way through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the

shelter of lofty trees.

‘The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space

between us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our

low voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew;

we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of

mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our

faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had

lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open an immense portal. The light

itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur

reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened

our thoughts, our blood, our regrets--and, straight ahead, the forests

sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.

‘I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in

the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,

with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open

to me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something

to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam

through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped

limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. “This

is glorious!” I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He

sat with his head sunk on his breast and said “Yes,” without raising his

eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the

reproach of his romantic conscience.

‘I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit

of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped

in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene

and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like

horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew

lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by

the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide

estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully

the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary

bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with

a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy

mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked

multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off

from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly,

striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully

on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village

that boasted of the white lord’s especial protection, and the two men

crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed

and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried

in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders

and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded

headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint,

voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes

confidently. The Rajah’s people would not leave them alone; there had

been some trouble about a lot of turtles’ eggs his people had collected

on the islets there--and leaning at arm’s-length upon his paddle, he

pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time

without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear

him by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat

on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the

silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the

immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing

north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal

Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.

‘“The trouble is,” remarked Jim moodily, “that for generations these

beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the

Rajah’s personal slaves--and the old rip can’t get it into his head that

. . .”

‘He paused. “That you have changed all that,” I said.

‘“Yes I’ve changed all that,” he muttered in a gloomy voice.

‘“You have had your opportunity,” I pursued.

‘“Have I?” he said. “Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my

confidence in myself--a good name--yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I

shall hold what I’ve got. Can’t expect anything more.” He flung his arm

out towards the sea. “Not out there anyhow.” He stamped his foot upon

the sand. “This is my limit, because nothing less will do.”

‘We continued pacing the beach. “Yes, I’ve changed all that,” he went

on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; “but

only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can’t you see

it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking

that silly old Tunku Allang’s coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss

over these rotten turtles’ eggs. No. I can’t say--enough. Never. I must

go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can

touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to--to”

. . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . .

“to keep in touch with” . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . .

“with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With--with--you,

for instance.”

‘I was profoundly humbled by his words. “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t

set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself.” I felt a gratitude,

an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping

my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that

was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the

low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like an ember snatched from the

fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the

approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked

himself; at last, as if he had found a formula--

‘“I shall be faithful,” he said quietly. “I shall be faithful,” he

repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes

wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple

under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled

some words of Stein’s. . . . “In the destructive element immerse! . . .

To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and

so--always--usque ad finem . . .” He was romantic, but none the

less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what

forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat,

leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars,

towards the sandbank to take me off. “And then there’s Jewel,” he said,

out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my

very thoughts so that his voice made me start. “There’s Jewel.” “Yes,”

I murmured. “I need not tell you what she is to me,” he pursued.

“You’ve seen. In time she will come to understand . . .” “I hope so,” I

interrupted. “She trusts me, too,” he mused, and then changed his tone.

“When shall we meet next, I wonder?” he said.

‘“Never--unless you come out,” I answered, avoiding his glance. He

didn’t seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.

‘“Good-bye, then,” he said, after a pause. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

‘We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose

on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward,

curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. “Will

you be going home again soon?” asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over

the gunwale. “In a year or so if I live,” I said. The forefoot grated on

the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice.

Jim, at the water’s edge, raised his voice. “Tell them . . .” he began.

I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The

half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that

looked dumbly at me. . . . “No--nothing,” he said, and with a slight

wave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the

shore till I had clambered on board the schooner.

‘By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the

coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the

very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of

gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still,

casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach

watching the schooner fall off and gather headway.

‘The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone; they

were no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable, oppressed

lives into the ears of the white lord, and no doubt he was listening to

it, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck--the luck “from

the word Go”--the luck to which he had assured me he was so completely

equal? They, too, I should think, were in luck, and I was sure their

pertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned bodies vanished on

the dark background long before I had lost sight of their protector. He

was white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with

the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the

opportunity by his side--still veiled. What do you say? Was it still

veiled? I don’t know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast

and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight

was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk

already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then

only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light

left in a darkened world. . . . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . .